Independent, how?
What exactly do you do?
How does that impact me, the reader?
Who will pay?
Need more data.

“A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.” –Alexander Hamilton

Study at Redstate University

Mississippi Deacon, I understand exactly what you are talking about and I LOVE IT! I would prefer to be individually independent from the energy grid, through whatever means possible – weather solar wind or geothermal a practical application of energy gathering technology would be to my advantage. Now there are some conditions that currently don’t apply and in fact move against my ability to do this.

The restrictive costs of the initial investment, some barriers to entry exist. These are coming down, however at present they are a severe limitation. In additional some technical expertise to install and manage these resources is important. It is foolish for someone who needs help to do his own plumbing to transfer his main energy source off of public power without understanding how it works. That said, one can always maintain a connection and with redundancy comes options.

Furthermore, and most importantly for this investment to make sense I would need to live a home 1) outside of a plan/association (right now I like the benefits of a nice neighborhood with a very small association fee) 2) be fully and irrevocably committed to the home and area for a long if not indefinite period of time. And now we see why giving this gift of freedom to many people is pointless, most men and women don’t have the ability or foresight to plan and commit to a course of action let alone develop around that plan the source of income and food aside from energy and water to truly be self-sustaining.

Therefore – I’ve just talked myself into doing this for my family and I’ve talked myself out of trying to convince others to do the same.

Thanks for the thoughts!

First, I don’t think, unless you live next to a river, you can really go to a one generation source type system. (That would be awesome though). However, I think capitalizing on some very basic principles could save normal people half or more on their power bill every month.

For instance, We all use water, right? pipe the incoming water in through a small turbine running even a 110 electric fan motor wired with a diode in the loop to prevent back flow.

What most people don’t understand is you don’t have to ever come off the grid. You really don’t need batteries either unless you are in the middle of nowhere. Then, you don’t need “batteries” per say, just a means of storing your energy, like compressing air. You want to turn kenetic energy into potential energy.

Now, in most areas of the country, your electric company will buy electricity that you generate from you if you don’t use it. Get this, they pay more for it than you do to buy it from them, around 12c per Kwatt hr more. Why use batteries? Sell your electricity back at a premium. Why would they do this you ask? Carbon offset taxes. They get a break from the government if they buy from a clean source rather than a coal or gas powered plant.

Neighborhoods
Ideally for neighborhoods, there are really three options as I see it (Unless you live by that river I spoke of earlier): 1. solar, 2. Wind, and 3. Thermal greenhouse generators.

Of course, any or all of these can be done on a home by home basis. But communities that come together could, I think, really profit from this type of thinking. You know what solar and wind are, what about the TGG’s you ask?

Think of it this way, if you take a large sheet of semi-clear plastic, laid it out across the ground and let the sun beat down on it, two things will happen. 1. You have a ton of condensation (greenhouse effect) collect on the bottom side, and 2. the air under the plastic will increase in temperature. Sit in your car on a sunny day. How hot does it get? Now use the priciple that the hot air rises and run that rising hot air through a wind powered generator, BAM, home TGG. And these are actually being built in large scale around the world. I’m thinking about putting out some literature on how to hand make some of these things on a budget.